


Colorado

by Aja



Category: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Yuletide, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth was, Butch couldn't exactly remember how they wound up on that vacation in Colorado in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colorado

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smithereen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithereen/gifts).



> this fic was written at the last minute, after foolproof plans for an epic, ironic saga of life and death fell through in affably hilarious ways. I feel Butch and the Kid would have appreciated this.

Whenever Butch mentioned that time in Denver, something would flicker in the Kid's face, always amusement but occasionally something more like resignation. For somebody that never talked the Kid sure used up more meaning with his face than most people did with their mouths their whole lives. (Butch included.)

The truth was, Butch couldn't exactly remember _how_ they wound up on that vacation in Colorado in the first place. He and the Kid had been arguing over it for years. Kid said they did it to let the heat die down from the Montpelier Savings  & Loan Repository incident (a very embarrassing episode in which Butch grabbed the money bag and took off - the same bag which later turned out to be full of the bank teller's rock collection.

"I told you not to make off with it if it didn't jingle!" Kid had fussed later.

"Well, how was I to know it wasn't padded to make robbers think it wasn't actually money!" Butch had retorted. One thing you could say about Kid - he had never properly ridiculed Butch for that stunt, even though it had cost the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang a full winter's worth of credibility among the outlaws in lower Nevada. Privately, Butch thought Kid had always been a lot nicer about Butch and his crazy ideas than he let on. Except for the one about Bolivia, and Butch still held that was a perfectly fine one, thanks.)

They had tried to settle the argument forever with Etta but she always rolled her eyes and let them keep arguing. Butch thought that was because she knew they'd rather argue about it no matter what anyway, but it was probably really because however it came about it had something to do with Etta's undergarments. It _may_ have been because Kid had walked in on Butch just as he was helping Etta with a broken stay. Which may have been in her corset and not her dress. Which Butch may have watched her remove in order to get to the broken corset in question.

"You girls playing dress-up?" the Kid had said after taking one look at the two of them, Etta with her arms up, Butch wrestling with the ties on her corset, dress slung over his shoulder.

"Ballet practice," Etta replied, still with her arms over her head, sticking out a graceful foot for good measure.

"The girls just can't keep their clothes on around me," Butch said, giving a yank on the bottom of the stay and winding up getting pinched by the metal. He drew back with a yelp, shaking his finger. The Kid rolled his eyes.

"Boy, I bet they'd line up to see you in a tutu," he snorted. "Grace personified."

"Man against machine," Butch said petulantly, pointing to the bottom of Etta's dress with his uninjured hand. "How do women even get in those steel traps?"

"Like breaking into a safe," Etta said. "We have to pick the lock."

The Kid turned her around. "Need a new dress, lady?"

"A new corset. Or you could just tell me you love me for my mind and I wouldn't have to wear one at all."

"New corset it is," he replied, and Butch laughed.

"Come on, Kid," he said, slinging his arms around the two of them. "Get the lady a new dress. Something real fancy."

The Kid eyed him. "Okay," he said. "Fine. I'll just swing by Sears & Roebucks on our way back from the bank. You know. The one we keep our accounts in."

"Oh, that bank."

"Yes, I was just on my way there to make a deposit of polka dots and moonbeams."

"Hey, I bet that would make a great dress. Save the deposit and take it straight to the seamstress."

Etta cut in, laughing.

"If you boys are going to buy me a dress, fine. If not, fine. I can get a new stay next time we pass by Clearmont. But if you're going to buy me a dress, then do it right. Take me to Denver and I'll be fitted for a dress that'll make Sarah Bernhardt look like Little Orphan Annie."

And that, possibly, was how they had found themselves taking a vacation through Denver, over the Rockies and into the city, during the coldest part of the year.

Butch, looking back on that vacation, would always joke about how it was the food he remembered best, but joking about the food was really just code for a lot of confusing and sometimes hazy memories. Some of which may or may not have involved the three of them falling into bed, drunk on wine and each other, after bringing back seven hundred dollars from the night's round of poker and roulette.

The three of them had lain there, Butch, Sundance, and Etta, all collapsed flat on Etta's queen-sized mattress (the hotel had given them separate rooms but Etta's had come with a suite so at night Butch and the Kid mostly wound up lazing around on the settee til they either dozed off where they were or she threw a pillow at them and told them to shut up and turn out the lights).

Butch remembered the order - Butch, Sundance next to him, Etta on the other side. He could feel the weight of the Kid on top of the covers beside him, their sides pressing together a little. His arm lay against the Kid's; he had lifted it after they all got their wind back, mind still heavy with the gambling rush and the alcohol, and rested it gently on top of Sundance's own. This is nice, he had thought. Just me and Etta and Kid. He tried not to think about Etta and the Kid together most of the time, but just then, with the three of them, limbs tangled together like a group of jumbled-up sailor knots, it was nice.

"I like being an outlaw," he said aloud, rather unnecessarily. "The pay is good and you get to pick your own days off."

Beside him, the Kid snorted and turned his head. Butch looked at him, thinking about how his eyes had gotten bluer over the past few days, how his voice had gotten more charming. For a moment the Kid just stared. Then he snorted, "Yeah, but the retirement fund is lousy," and Butch laughed, and the Kid laughed, and Etta laughed, and it was just about perfect.

What happened next may or may not have been the thing that created that returning look of amusement in Sundance's face. It may have been that Butch had looked at Sundance and shifted a little, moving just that little bit closer, at the same moment that Etta sat up and looked at them both and took them by the hand, and it may have been that Sundance had looked back at the two of them and that the air suddenly seemed a lot thicker.

"Well," said Butch, eyeing the two of them. "This is interesting."

"You could say that," said Sundance.

"Sometimes I think you really do want me to take her," Butch had said, nodding his head at Etta, but keeping his eyes on the Kid.

"You always were all mouth," Sundance had said, and kissed him.

It had been a deep kiss, slow and full of warmth. Butch had wrapped himself up in it, because it wasn't every man who got to kiss his best friend with the prettiest woman in the world looking on, and it wasn't every kiss where you got kissed as if you both knew you had to it remember forever. It was the remembering later on, Butch always thought, that put the regret on Sundance's face. It was the remembering, later on, that made Butch always long for that place, that night.

"Well?" said Etta when they were done, throwing up her hands and looking utterly unruffled. "Take him."

Butch and Sundance looked at each other.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Go on. _Take_ him."

Butch laughed. "Well, lady," he said. "I know a good deal when I see one."

"You don't know anything yet," Etta retorted. "You may wind up with two for the price of one."

What may or may not have happened next was that whatever happened next happened. But what had most definitely happened was that Etta's new dress had received two conspicuous tears, in two very conspicuous places. What definitely happened after that was that Butch never looked too long into the Kid's eyes after that, lest he find they were still just as blue as they had been in Colorado.

Kid wasn't the only one who could write meaning on his face, when it mattered.

 

 

 


End file.
